Shine Like The Sun

You know how it is: you're excited to start a new job, you have the initial exhaustion and nerves and learning, and then the newness wears off and you're faced with routine. And then it's a different type of exhaustion, it's that frustration of never having the time or energy for doing things you want to get done. Suddenly the only thing you seem to have any energy for in the evenings is vegging out on the sofa watching telly that you don't even enjoy.

That's how it's been for me these past three weeks. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have a job, but being thrown back into full time work combined with tax issues, a spot of homesickness and having to run my own home have taken it out of me. And so, last Thursday, I had gotten myself into a real grump. Fortunately, I had someone there to listen and give hugs, and d'you know what? Getting it off my chest was exactly what I needed to do. I suddenly felt much lighter, and I told myself I had to stop being miserable and start being happy. So, that evening, after Chinese takeaway (comfort food does wonders), I sat down with my journal which, as mentioned a few posts back, I've been keeping especially to remind me of good times I've had. I set to work catching up on it, but not before glancing back at what I wrote during my last few weeks in Hamburg. And it took me back to a promise I made to myself, which had since been pushed to the back of my mind with all my moving and reluctance to leave Germany. I felt so surrounded by lovely people who thought highly of me, and I realised I wanted to be that person they saw me as, inside as well as out.  Not the nervous little mouse paranoid that I was a nuisance, an annoyance, and that nobody liked me, but instead the smiley, cheerful girl that the people in Germany had come to know me as. And one comment stuck out in particular: one of the most loving and selfless ladies I've ever met told me I shined like the sun, and to keep shining. And so I made my promise, I told myself I would feel like that person they described.

So, on Thursday, I told myself to stop being grumpy for no real reason (and honestly, there was no real reason, just a few little things that I was allowing to get to me) and that from now on I will remind myself to stay cheerful and grateful, and to keep repeating positive mantras. I'm in a new chapter of my life and I have lots of things to appreciate, and just because I don't have much time on my hands to do things I enjoy (reading, writing, being creative, for example) doesn't mean I can't make time. Life is good, it's high time I shine inside as well as out.

Norwich, UK, August 2015